Japan's troubled first mission to Mars is set to be abandoned in the latest of a series of costly failures to hit the country's space development program, according to news reports and officials.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency will make a final attempt this week to remotely repair electronic circuitry on the Nozomi probe. The probe was damaged by a solar flare last year, which caused the main engine to shut down, officials said.

"We will send a final order to Nozomi to fix a short-circuit in the electric system," said Professor Ichiro Nakatani, an agency researcher in charge of the mission.

"We still have a thin hope that the system will start up again and Nozomi will be put into orbit around Mars. But I have to say that it is very difficult under the current circumstances," Nakatani said.

Ironically, the craft's name Nozomi means "hope".

The Japanese newspaper Nihon Keizai Shimbun said the chances of success were at near zero, and that the agency would officially announce this week that the mission would be abandoned.

Nozomi, Japan's first Martian probe, was launched in 1998 with an initial plan to go into orbit around Mars by the summer of 1999.

But it had a problem with fuel consumption in its first year and its attempt to swing by the Earth's orbit to gain momentum before travelling to Mars failed.

An extensive solar flare damaged Nozomi in April last year, crippling some communications equipment and devices that manoeuvre the probe.

Latest failure

If the agency gives up on the mission as predicted, it would be the latest failure in the nation's space development program.

Japan aborted the launch of spy satellites to monitor North Korea shortly after a Japanese H-2A rocket blasted off in late November.

The agency destroyed both the rocket and satellites as one of the two rocket boosters failed to separate from the fuselage in the second phase.

It was Japan's first launch failure since 1999 when it also destroyed a rocket carrying a satellite in flight.

Last month's satellite launch failure means Japan will be forced to delay the planned launch of another H-2A rocket in February, observers have said.

The latest failure was in sharp contrast to China's success in October in sending a Chinese astronaut into orbit to circle the Earth 14 times in a 21-hour flight.